News behind the news. This picture is me (white spot) standing on the bridge connecting European and North American tectonic plates. It is located in the Reykjanes area of Iceland. By-the-way, this is a color picture.

Four churches in Massachusetts are suing the state over a new anti-discrimination law that provides no exemption for churches.

Instead, the statute restricts speech that might conflict with government views on gender identity and forces churches to open their bathrooms and locker rooms to people based on their perceived gender identity.

…The state legislature added gender identity as a protected class to the state’s public accommodation law in July 2016. On Sept. 1, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination issued a “Gender Identity Guidance,” which determined that a church would be considered as a place of public accommodation “if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public.”

“All events held at a church on its property have a religious purpose and the government has no authority to violate the First Amendment’s guarantees of freedom of religion and speech,” Alliance Defending Freedom legal counsel Christiana Holcomb said.

The law went into effect Oct. 1. But opponents of the law celebrated a major win late Tuesday in their efforts to repeal it. The Massachusetts secretary of state has certified the required number of signatures needed to put a repeal measure on the 2018 ballot.

It will be interesting to see if the issue makes it on to the 2018 ballot, even though it has the necessary signatures. A number of years ago, the voters of Massachusetts collected enough signatures to put gay marriage on the ballot, but somehow that never happened. The gay marriage law that took effect in Massachusetts was the result of a court decision–not a vote of the people. Unfortunately, I think this issue may be resolved the same way.

This lawsuit is the result of serious abuses of power by the District Attorney in an effort to intimidate and silence supporters of Scott Walker as Governor. Please follow the link above to read the background on the story. I am going to focus on some of the abuses of power by the District Attorney and his political allies.

Ms. Archer chronicles some of the events:

Nothing could have prepared me for waking up to the shouts of men with battering rams announcing that they were about to break down my door on that morning in 2011. It was so unexpected and frightening that I ran down from my bedroom without clothes on. Panicked by the threatened show of force, I was then humiliated as officers outside the window yelled at me to get dressed and open up. I quickly retrieved clothing and dressed as I unlocked the door.

Agents with weapons drawn swarmed through every part of the house. They barged into the bathroom where my partner was showering. I was told to shut up and sit down. The officers rummaged through drawers, cabinets and closets. Their aggressive assault on my home seemed more appropriate for a dangerous criminal, not a longtime public servant with no criminal history.

After they left, I surveyed the damage. Drawers and closets had been ransacked. My deceased mother’s belongings were strewn across the floor. Neighbors gathered in small clusters at the end of their driveways and the press arrived in force.

What had prompted the raid? My guess: As an adviser to Gov. Walker, I had played a lead role in drafting and implementing public-employee labor reforms that would propel him to the national stage.

In the months following the raid, I was interrogated by the district attorney’s deputies numerous times on a variety of topics related to the governor’s tenure as Milwaukee county executive, but I was never charged with a crime. I faced seven grueling confrontations that seemed designed simply to intimidate and harass me into providing damaging information about Gov. Walker—though I had none.

I have also been subjected to derogatory headlines and made the butt of jokes on talk radio and anti-Walker websites about everything from my personal appearance to my sexual orientation and mental stability. Neighbors became distant and suspicious.

Ms. Archer concludes:

My reputation and career have been damaged beyond repair. But knowing what I now know, there is a clear legal path forward. There should be no place in America where powerful law-enforcement officials are allowed to misuse their offices for political purposes.

American voters need to wake up and see what is happening to our political system. It has been taken over by thugs and bullies who do not care about our representative republic–they care simply about their own power and preserving it. It is time to get out the broom and do a clean sweep of those local, state, and federal officials who do not understand that they are supposed to represent the people and serve at the will of the people.

Duggar argued that the ordinance affected “the safety of Northwest Arkansas women and children” because it would “allow men – yes, I said men – to use women’s and girls’ restrooms, locker rooms, showers, sleeping areas, and other areas that are designated for females only.”

“I don’t believe the citizens of Fayetteville would want males with past child predator convictions that claim they are female to have a legal right to enter private areas that are reserved for women and girls,” she said.

When it comes down to it, I suspect there are very few Americans comfortable with the idea of their teenage daughters using the same restrooms at the same time as men claiming that they are female.

Americans need to understand that Islam is not a religion that promotes tolerance of other religions. Saudi Arabia does not allow the building of Christian churches. In Muslim countries, Christians are routinely persecuted. Where Sharia Law is in force, Christians are killed or enslaved. That is the practice of Islam in its true form (when it is in control). When Islam is not in control, it appears to make peace with Christians until it gains control. Unfortunately, some American churches are being duped into believing that Islam is a friend of Christianity and that the two can work together. Since Islam regards Christianity as blasphemy against the prophet (punishable by death), working together should not be an option for Christians. However, some of us haven’t figured that out yet.

The Washington Post reported the story on Monday. The Washington Post story included the following:

The service, which will begin around 12:20 and is for invited guests only, developed out of a relationship between the cathedral’s director of liturgy, the Rev. Gina Campbell, and the South African ambassador to the United States, Ebrahim Rasool, who is Muslim. The two worked together on a memorial service for Nelson Mandela, Jaka said.

“This is a dramatic moment in the world and in Muslim-Christian relations,” Rasool said in a prepared statement. “This needs to be a world in which all are free to believe and practice and in which we avoid bigotry, Islamaphobia, racism, anti-Semitism, and anti-Christianity and to embrace our humanity and to embrace faith.”

Hamas is an affiliate of the Egypt-based Islamist group the Muslim Brotherhood, which was ousted from power in Egypt by huge public protest in 2012. Both CAIR and ISNA have close ties to the brotherhood movement.

The Episcopal Church is allowing Muslims to hold a worship service in the Washington National Cathedral. What are the chances of a mosque in Saudi Arabia allowing the Catholics to hold a worship service there? I really think we need to take a closer look at this.

If you doubt that ISNA and CAIR are working against America, please follow the link to one of the exhibits in the Holy Land Foundation Trial. The first part of the exhibit is in Arabic, but the English translation starts on Page 16. Please read it. The Holy Land Foundation Trial began after a man and women were stopped on a bridge in Maryland where the woman was filming the structure of the bridge. Their home was searched as a result of an outstanding warrant, and a hidden basement revealed the documents outlining the plan to turn America into a country ruled by Sharia Law. The document lists the organizations involved and the plans. Things are actually moving forward in their plan and will continue to do so until more Americans wake up and begin fighting for the principles America was founded on.

Yesterday Breitbart.com posted an article about the Pigford Settlement. I have written about the Pigford Settlement before, you can use the search engine on this site to find the history of the program. Briefly, the Pigford Settlement was a $4.55 billion program signed into law in 2010 that provided $3.4 billion to American Indian tribes for past royalties from oil, gas, and timber extraction from their lands and $1.15 billion for African–American farmers who said they have been unfairly denied federal loans and other assistance.

In English that means that a lot of people receiving money in the Pigford Settlement may not actually be legally entitled to it.

The GAO report states:

For example, by the terms of the settlement agreement, most claims must be evaluated based solely on the information submitted by the claimants and, as a result, the adjudicator of these claims has no way of independently verifying that information.

Let’s go slowly through that paragraph. There are three main points it makes:

“By terms of the settlement agreement” shows the fraud is baked right in. This is a feature, not a bug.

“most claims must be evaluated based solely on the information submitted by the claimants” means that a majority of claims are judged based only on statements by the person who stands to collect a $50,000 check.

“adjudicator of these claims has no way of independently verifying that information” means that there’s no way for the person judging the claim to check for fraud.

In other words, the lawyers and politicians who designed Pigford gave people judging a claim’s validity no objective way to determine whether it is actually fraudulent or not; they have to accept the claimant’s statement as truth. In a government payout program whose architects anticipated some level of fraudulent or duplicate claims, no one included oversight against such a contingency.

These are American taxpayer dollars that are being spent. I don’t want to see anyone’s taxes raised until the government is held accountable for the money it is already spending. I suspect we could come very close to balancing the budget just by taking out the waste and fraud. Let’s do that before we take more money away from the people who actually legally earned it.

Today’s Washington Examiner reports that Eric Holder spoke at a rally held by Al Sharpton for Trayvon Martin.

The article reports:

“If we find evidence of a potential federal criminal civil rights crime, we will take appropriate action,” Holder added. “And, at every step, the facts and the law will guide us forward,” he added.

Al Sharpton, Holder’s host, has called for an “escalation” in civil disobedience if George Zimmerman — the shooter in the Trayvon Martin case who said he acted in self-defense — is not arrested.

Why is the Attorney General taking part in a rally that has determined the verdict of a case that has not even been tried and encouraging civil disobedience? Isn’t it the Attorney General’s job to uphold the law? The law says that George Zimmerman is innocent until proven guilty. If the people closest to the crime have chosen not to arrest Mr. Zimmerman, why is the Attorney General attending a rally to encourage civil disobedience to change that?